Seven more US soldiers were disciplined yesterday as the torture scandal at the Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad continued to spread, triggering an inquiry into military intelligence.

Six officers and sergeants were issued with formal reprimands, possibly ending their military careers, for their failure to stop the abuse of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib. The seventh soldier was given a lesser rebuke.

Six military policemen are already facing criminal charges for assaulting and sexually humiliating prisoners.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday that President George Bush had talked to the defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld by telephone, urging that those responsible should be pun ished. "The president wanted to make sure appropriate action is being taken against those responsible for these shameful and appalling acts," Mr McClellan said.

It was clear yesterday that the scandal would go much further. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski - a reservist who was removed from her job supervising US military prisons in Iraq after soldiers blew the whistle on the abuses - yesterday claimed that General Ricardo Sanchez, who commands US land forces in Iraq, should bear some of the blame. "There is a shared responsibility for this," she said.

A command decision to give military intelligence officers authority over military policemen was criticised in a report into the scandal. According to details of the report published by the Los Angeles Times, a team from Guantánamo Bay visited Iraq in September 2003 to advise US officers on how to extract more information from Iraqi detainees.

It recommended that military policemen could be used as "an enabler for interrogation" - a recommendation that appears to have led to orders from military intelligence officers to guards at Abu Ghraib to "soften up" inmates for questioning. The head of the delegation that made the suggestion was Major General Geoffrey Miller, who was sent to Iraq a month ago to overhaul the prison system in light of the scandal.

In Iraq, the chief coalition spokesman, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, confirmed that an investigation was under way into the role of military intelligence in Abu Ghraib, but argued that it did not detract from the responsibility of the military policemen who di rectly inflicted beatings and abuse on prisoners, shown in photographs leaked to the press in recent days.

"They made the choice to do that, and now they seem to be concerned about being caught," Gen Kimmitt said.

"The first investigation, a criminal investigation _ went after the individual conduct of the soldiers you see in those photographs.

"The second investigation, an administrative investigation, looked into command policies and procedures, and from that there appeared to be issues with military intelligence as well."

Asked about Gen Karpinski's suggestion that the top commanders share the blame, Gen Kimmitt replied: "I think it's important to recognise that as soon as that information was brought to the right level, investigations were started."